I just wanted to write a really short post to share this tip with you. A lot of people seem to stumble on this site while they are looking to do some tests. Now, as always you will most likely not have full on storage array sitting around that is just waiting to be a guinea pig while serving your production environment.
A partial solution is to test things in a simulator. For people who want to test things on their Cisco switches there is an open source “Internetwork Operating System” or IOS simulator that gives you a taste of the real thing. Admittedly it’s not the same as having a full environment, but it might just help you in testing a scenario or routine that you have in mind.
Now, you will find that there is also a simulator for the CLARiiON environment that is called the “Navisphere simulator” and a CX simulator. Problem is that the simulator can’t be downloaded with any old Powerlink account. Partners and employees can use a simple download in Powerlink ( Home => Products => Software E-O => Navisphere Management Suite => Demos) , but if you don’t fall under that category you will have a hard time actually finding a download.
Normally to get the simulator you would need to order some CLARiiON training. The Navisphere and CX simulators are actually packaged with the Foundations course and you can also find them in one of their video instructor led trainings. The problem is that you or your boss will pay quite a bit for said trainings, and this is not great if you just want to perform a quick test.
Now for my tip… Buy the “Information and Storage Management” book (ISBN-13: 978-0-470-29421-5 / ISBN-10: 0-470-29421-3) from your favorite book supplier. Beside it being a good read it also allows you to register on a special site created for the book where you can actually find some learning aids that also include the Navisphere simulator and the CX simulator. You can find the book starting around $40 and there’s also a version available for the Kindle if you are in to e-books. You don’t need any special information to register the book on the EMC site so it’s quite a quick way to get the simulators and check if you can actually simulate the scenario you have in mind.
BasRaayman's Technical Take 